The age of the self-publisher: Good or bad for 'traditional' media?
In the wake of the recent acquisition of The Huffington Post by AOL and the launch of The Daily by News Corp, it is clear that the world of media continues to change before our eyes in a way and at a pace never before seen in the history of how information is communicated. These are but two, albeit blockbuster, examples of how technology is re-shaping how we get information, and from whom. Indeed, the communications world now has evolved from Old Media (print, broadcast) to New Media (online, mobile) to Social Media (interactive, participatory) to Who Knows What You Call it When You Combine All That Stuff, and more.
So it begs the question – who is the media? In the old days media was defined as the guys with the mastheads and broadcast towers – the people who assembled scores of people to scour the world for relevant information for their intended audiences, filtered it, and tried to present it with a sense of balance, credibility and authority. It was basically a one-way street: them to us. They could do that because they owned the mechanisms to distribute the news – printing presses and channels over the air waves. They made a business out of building vast, desirable and targeted groups of what we now call eyeballs (readers, viewers and listeners) who advertisers sought to reach. And they could charge for both the value of the information (to subscribers) and their ability to reach audiences (to advertisers).
The internet changed all of that, of course, as Huffington Post has just proven. The barrier to entry to “publish” or “broadcast” was reduced to essentially nothing (which is what HuffPo pay their writers, but that’s another story), and just about anyone could put up a web site, a blog, a YouTube Channel, a Twitter account, etc. Technology enabled publishing information to be fast, mobile and easy. The viral nature of the Internet made gathering eyeballs pretty easy, too. Search engines (and their understanding thereof) even helped the more sophisticated, and sometime less scrupulous, new age publishers leapfrog traditional media quickly.
Almost overnight – or so it seemed – they became us.
Old media was admittedly slow and disorganized in its reaction to the impact of the Internet. Understandable given its roots, its investment in infrastructure, and in many cases its dogged insistence that real news couldn’t be delivered by anyone without a hard-earned legacy of trust, authority and impartiality. They were in a sense right on the last part, as the glaring weakness of the web is its general lack of oversight and accountability. But in this age of insatiable appetites for sound bites and instant news feeds, we read and believe anyway.
Gradually the ‘old’ media have figured things out and are adapting to the new world order. Those who haven’t by now are mostly gone.
To bring it down to our level here in electronics, we’ve seen the departure of many familiar names and titles, good sources of information whose failing was not adapting its delivery mechanism. But we can then look at examples of more nimble adapters, such as the continued evolution of UBM and its franchise brand, EE Times. Once known as the most influential weekly newspaper in our business, it has changed its stripes and reinvented itself in many ways to respond to both market needs and changing business dynamics – all while holding on to the one core thing that all surviving old media can lean on – its voice of authority and impartiality. That exists regardless of the channel, be it on line, events, research or the myriad ways EE Times’ expertise as an independent and unbiased presenter of information can be presented.
Back in the day, freedom of the press was limited to those who owned one
Ah, but lest you think this is an unabashed love letter on the virtues and wisdom of EE Times and UBM, read on. The fly in the ointment is this: Do buyers really care where the information they need is coming from? We need only look at UBM’s own reader survey on the topic of where engineers prefer to get information for some insight into that issue. The top response? Vendors’ web sites. That’s right, they go right to the source when they want the scoop on product and technology. “Who needs the filter, we’ve got Google,” they seem to be saying.
Interestingly, “Colleagues” is the second most popular option for information gathering. So there would seem to be much value in publishers like EE Times/UBM getting into both the events business (where engineering can network) as well as trying to figure out how to leverage social media in the engineering world. And, the dramatic falloff in the influence of print publications – 10% less influential than just a year ago – should tell us where that medium is going, as if we didn’t know already.
And make no mistake that the vendors know what’s going on. As advertising budgets for traditional media have dried up, investments in on-line marketing have increased (a veritable chicken and the egg – did advertising shrivel because advertisers started spending differently, or did print’s influence decline because of a lack of advertising? Or maybe it’s just the economy, stupid). SEO, PPC and fledgling attempts at social media are all tactics to drive traffic directly to web sites and have replaced ‘back in the day’ techniques like print ads and other off-line strategies. The impact these activities have on product sales can be debated, but certainly they are keeping visibility high in certain circles – even if in some cases it just us talking to ourselves.
Perhaps the most interesting trend, though, is the blurring of the editorial line between different types of publishers. As traditional publishers have been financially constrained, there are fewer and fewer editorial jobs available for very qualified writers. At the same time, the vendors recognize that content is king in the on-line world – largely for attracting search engines, but also in vague attempts at building ‘communities’ of users. So we’ve seen the move by several well known journalists to ‘the other side.’ Richard Goering at Cadence and Mike Santarini at Xilinx are two prime examples of outstanding technology observers who cut their teeth in the trade press and are now plying essentially the same trade for product suppliers. The vendors have become publishers, in some cases in the true Old Media style (see: Xilinx’s award winning Xcell Journal, which goes so far to sell advertising – talk about a role reversal).
Richard Goering has moved his voice from traditional media to a Cadence publishing model
Any why not? The customers seek them out anyway so the more quality information they can provide, the better. Giving it the appearance of having been filtered or neutrally presented by having former trade press editors author and edit it is smart – and in fairness, most of the guys performing this role stick by and large to their ingrained journalistic ethics in presenting reasonably balanced content. Indeed, Goering had a post on a recent Design Con panel published and written with more depth faster than EE Times itself could do the same for the panel held at its own event. But we all know where their bread is buttered and accept that.
I say, bring it on – mash it up. Let product suppliers publish. They have a wealth of information and resources to keep the pipeline filled with what customers want. Buyers in our industry are smart enough to know what their motivation is.
And let publishers do what they have always been good at, which in today’s parlance is about building communities – whether virtually through interactive forums or in person through events and such. They add unique value through their brand, reach and independent impartiality. How they make money doing that is another question but it’s a bit like the proverbial railroad companies who should have figured out sooner that they were in the transportation business, not in moving locomotives over steel tracks.
